NY midwife who gave kids homeopathic pellets instead of vaccines fined $300K for falsifying records ( apnews.com )

A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations has been fined $300,000, the state’s health department announced this week.

Jeanette Breen, who operates Baldwin Midwifery on Long Island, administered the pellets as an alternative to vaccinations and then falsified their immunization records, the agency said Wednesday.

The scheme, which goes back least to the 2019-2020 school year, involved families throughout the state, but the majority reside on suburban Long Island. In 2019, New York ended a religious exemption to vaccine requirements for schoolchildren.

The health department said immunization records of the children who received the falsified records have been voided, and their families must now prove the students are up-to-date with their required shots or at least in the process of getting them before they can return to school.

HawlSera ,

Child Endangerment is also a crime

ChewTiger ,

I'll say the same thing I just said in another post.

What a trash bag of a human being.

GlendatheGayWitch ,

Only $200 per incidence? That doesn't seem very steep for giving with peoples' lives

ohlaph ,

Big money. Like it should be way more than that Scoob.

phoenixz ,

And jailtime? She actively and knowingly risked the lives of children FFS, not only the ones she gave crap, but also the ones around them.

She should be jailed for a long time

psud ,

knowingly

You think she knew real stuff?

0Xero0 , (edited )
@0Xero0@lemmy.world avatar

For some reason I read "midwife" as "wildlife" and was confused as shit.

ExfilBravo ,

Wait until she needs a doctor and then send her to a clown doctor instead. So she knows how it feels.

stoly ,

I'm amazed that vaccines are part of a midwife's role.

doctorcrimson ,

I looked it up and while it doesn't have a specific number of credits to be a licensed midwife in the state of New York, they do require you complete a Midwifery Course and require at least some Nutrition and Pharmacology credits as well as a comprehensive examination. The lowest number of credits I could find for Midwifery was 88 which is a lot less than an average bachelor's degree, but some higher level courses required RN status to complete. It appears the term is synonymous with Nurse in a lot of contexts so at first I thought it might be a difference in dialect, but upon closer inspection many midwife organizations appear holistic in nature, as in "spiritualism."

I really hate people who actively harm others based on their spiritual beliefs. The world would be better if she spent her life in prison, not just fined.

stoly ,

Thanks for the research.

mojofrododojo ,

they're simply trying to increase the number of opportunities to vaccinate.

stoly ,

That makes a great deal of sense.

mojofrododojo ,

totally, and generally is effective until you run into fuckwits like this lady. We had awesome, science-based midwives to help our delivery and it went great. Some states like WA license both at the state level and require other education / certs.

GilgameshCatBeard ,

Why is she not in prison for life?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

"My six-year-old needs to be protected from a deadly disease but I don't trust vaccines. I know! I'll call a midwife!"

She is awful and deserves prison time, not just a fine, but the parents are also fucking stupid.

Snapz ,

The importantance of vaccines are "I need to do my part to protect OTHER kids AND adults from deadly disease"

That's the biggest part of this problem though, it's not "my six year old" on the table here - it's everyone's six year old. I have a responsibility to understand that.

If we can't understand the above, then we don't live in a functioning society.

lagomorphlecture ,

Unfortunately at this point we actually don't live in a functioning society.

mojofrododojo ,

we don’t live in a functioning society.

beginning to suspect this is right.... still wearing my mask in crowded spaces, still watching 1000s die weekly from covid, no one seems to fucking care.... 1712 died last week.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00

Texas_Hangover ,

That sounds awfully similar to deaths from the flu every year, why didn't everybody flip out and wrap their faces in panty liners before big scary covid came along and petrified the sheep? I'm old enough to remember all the terrifying "pandemics" that the media tried to scare everybody with every 5 or 12 years or so. Covid is the one that stuck.

mojofrododojo ,

That sounds awfully similar to deaths from the flu every year,

If it does, it's only because you're profoundly stupid. They aren't the same. Millions died from Covid, 1.2million in the US alone - Stop acting like it's just a few randos.....

scare everyone? Scare everyone into what? How fucking weak are you that wearing a mask is too much? what a child

panty liner? jesus you really are a 5 year old.

Snapz ,

Everyone knows you're afraid when they read your impotent posturing here.

You're trying so hard to get your Darwin award, and because you're still here, I guess we'll just add this latest one to the long list of failures in your life. You probably don't admit it to anyone except yourself when it's dark at night, but you know, as strongly as you know anything, that when you leave a room people laugh at you - lightly at first and then they just stop as they become overwhelmed with pity for the shell of a person you are.

Just yelling at the sky trying to prove you're the bravest coward, and fooling nobody.

mojofrododojo ,

eloquent retort.

THE_ANON ,

Yeah she should get prison and they should follow up with the kids who is unvaccinated because of her and see if they are suffering from anything due to lack of vaccine and increase the time.

AngryCommieKender ,

I suspect that she selected her midwifery clients based on their views about vaccines.

mojofrododojo ,

I wouldn't be surprised if her patient's parents knew she was pencil whipping these vaccinations, otherwise she'd be in jail or being sued by the families.

ILikeBoobies ,

Yeah, if the parents knew what was going on then they should lose custody

girlfreddy ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

Authorities never looked into whether or not the parents/guardians were aware of it, so they get off scott free here.

Erin Clary, a health department spokesperson, said Thursday that while parents and legal guardians had sought out and paid Breen for her services, they weren’t the focus of the agency’s investigation.

Rooter ,

No jail time? That's disappointing.

Legendsofanus ,
@Legendsofanus@lemmy.world avatar

Why would someone do this? Do they feel like a rebellious hero?

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

They would feel like they are saving the children from the evil government that try to give dangerous drugs to kids.

Legendsofanus ,
@Legendsofanus@lemmy.world avatar

Is there any way to stop this kind of thinking in old people?

funkless_eck ,

be the us government in the last 100 years and don't ... deliberately infect people with syphilis (Tuskagee), deliberately test lead paint on their children (JH-KKI), test chemical weapons on them (Whitecoat), enact compulsory sterilization (Buck v Bell), adding spinal taps to kids (Wentworth), replace prison inmates testicles with dead men's/animal testicles (San Quentin), or give them malaria (Stateville) or spray them with pesticides until they get lupus, brain issues or their skin is forever damaged (Holmesberg) spray an entire US city (San Francisco) with pneumonia-inducing bacteria (Seaspray), give a school class hepetits (Willowbrook), try to give the entire state of Georgia malaria (Operation Big Buzz), hire sex workers to give out their services for free and then inject people with experimental drugs and LSD (Midnight Climax), deliberately put mental health patients into months-long medical-induced comas, then wake them into them wearing a blacked out helmet where they can't see or hear but are played a loop saying "You are a good person" while physically restrained, being randomly electrocuted and fed a cocktail of drugs... for weeks or months without rest, causing the patients to end up completely incapable of normal human function afterwards (MKULTRA Sub-proj 68)...

probably some of that eroded some trust among the general populace (not an anti vaxxer btw but wanted to add some context that some concerns aren't totally unfounded)

Devorlon ,
@Devorlon@lemmy.zip avatar

Because Anti-vaxxers don't exist in other countries...

It's more that people are distrustful of large organisations in general (governments, business, religion). There's a rightful suspicion of faceless entities, and I don't think that can be "fixed".

stoly ,

They didn't think that way when they got old, they always felt that way then got old.

hemko ,

Or they got paid under the table for faked vaccine records by nutcase parents

stoly ,

They are in it for the politics and religious belief. Really, this is "You're not my mom and you can't make me", but spoken by adults.

xePBMg9 ,

That should be 300k per kid.

SeaJ ,

She paid $150k and promised not to deal with medication anymore.

Drusas ,

If any of these kids die[d] of Covid, she should be held liable.

Norgur ,

I think you misread what's happening. The parents actively sought her out for this service and Covid wasn't part of the "immunization" scheme she offered.

monkeyslikebananas2 ,

So her and the parents then.

trash ,
@trash@lemm.ee avatar

Absolutely. Negligent parents should be held accountable.

psud ,

COVID is tame compared to the diseases we immunize against.

Drusas ,
  1. No, not if you're looking at all of them.
  2. Even if that were true, so what?
Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Homeopathy should be outlawed. Pseudoscience masquerading as healthcare.

mihies ,

There is placebo effect as well, so it might somehow help. But not the way they think and it shouldn't be a substitute for proper medicine.

sjmarf ,
@sjmarf@sh.itjust.works avatar

Not for babies, it won’t

mihies ,

It could to some degree through parents, but most probably not, indeed.

stoly ,

I do think that you're right here. Parents could give a placebo to a child without realizing that it is a placebo, calm down, causing the child to calm down. Children are like dogs and stare directly at the faces of the adults around them to know how they should react to a situation. A calm parent can make a calm child.

derpgon ,

Actually, it does. A friend of mine uses homeopathic anal suppositories for his almost 1 y/o and it almost always calms her down.

Guess having stuff shoved up your butt doesn't need natural language to be understood lol.

derf82 ,

Probably more like “I better shut up, or mom will shove more stuff up my butt.”

stoly ,

You forgot the most important rule of humanity: everything is normal to a child. That child thinks that all kids get pills shoved up their asses every night and doesn't think anything of it.

JoBo ,

That's child abuse. But it's also an example of how strong beliefs in homeopathy can arise. With fluctuating conditions, people often seek a solution when symptoms (or the child's cries) are at their worst. When they get better soon after, it creates an illusion of effectiveness.

A similar illusion is at work with the MMR vaccine. Autism becomes diagnosable at around the same age as the first shot is given, creating a powerful impression that the two events are connected.

It's why we have randomised controlled trials. With no control arm for comparison, your friend has concluded that abusing their child is somehow useful.

derpgon ,

I myself am note sure whether they are any useful or effective, to each of their own. It's not like I can talk him out of it. I wouldn't spend a dime on any homeopathic at all.

derf82 ,

The placebo effect isn’t stopping measles or polio.

Empricorn ,

Placebo is a real peer-reviewed thing and a powerful tool in the right hands. But it has to be authorized and prescribed by a real doctor who knows what they're doing...

stoly ,

At its roots, it's like PETA--originally started out by nice people who wanted people to be nice to animals. Over time, the whackadoos took over and now they are a hateful org.

Homeopathy had its origins in treating the whole person and not just the disease, but was quickly taken over by quacks and placebo salespeople.

Gumus ,

Homeopathy was developed and thriving in an era when "do nothing" was better for the patient than contemporary accepted treatments.

LillyPip ,
@LillyPip@lemmy.ca avatar

Homeopathy had its origins in treating the whole person and not just the disease

That’s actually holistic medicine, not homeopathy. Homeopathy was invented in the late 1700s as an evolution of the medieval belief in humours.

Homeopathy’s premise is that ‘like cures like’ (a substance that causes symptoms in healthy people can cure them in sick people), coupled with a belief that water has a spiritual memory that can be unlocked by ritually diluting and shaking until no molecules of the active ingredient remain. Common dilutions are 1:10^60 or higher.

Here’s a great write-up on what it is and how it began from the National Library of Medicine.

It’s commonly mistaken for holistic medicine, but it’s a very different (and potentially dangerous) thing.

stoly ,

Thank you.

tsonfeir ,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Just put a lemon on it

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